I travel somewhat regularly for my job which means I spend a lot of time in hotels. For me that means I tend to see a lot of late night TV without the benefit of a DVR type system to skip commercials. A couple of years ago there were a lot of rather cryptic ones running about an impending financial disaster. Having seen the commercial (or a variant) what seemed liked 1000 times, I finally went to the website they were promoting and was treated to a lengthy infomercial basically trying to sell their financial planning service. But in the free teaser materials there was a lot of advice about buying farmland and silver which kinda stuck with me. So oddly enough you can say that a late night infomercial actually opened my eyes to the possibility that all was not quite right.
Over Thanksgiving that year, my cousin happened to bring his “work” home with him. He had recently got a job with a major manufacturer of AR-15 style rifles and had several of the sales models with him. It was the first time I’d fired that type of gun. I was hooked (that’s a story for another day). But he kept talking about this guy “Captain Rawles” and how everyone at his work was talking about his books and getting “prepped”. This was the first I’d really ever heard about this.
That Christmas I got Captain Rawles book Patriots and I devoured it. You can get one at Amazon here (Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse) and I highly recommend it. It’s a great story and full of information to get a “newbie prepper” thinking. From there it spiraled to constantly reading every blog I could find trying to learn all I could about self-sufficient living, prepping, different disaster scenarios, and the like.
Unfortunately I was overwhelmed. I went from totally happy go lucky husband/father to overly concerned for my children’s future in some post-apocalyptic world. Not to mention the stress of the 100 or so members of the extended but relatively close family I needed to worry about.
While being a “survival expert” was not in my bag of tricks back then, being an analyst and planner was right in my wheelhouse. I realized I had to start with myself and work out from there so as many sites advise…I made a list of lists and began to systemically define what I needed to learn, who I needed to tell, and what I needed to get. 3 years later, I’m still not “there” but certainly better off than I was and have got a few others on board as well.
Anyway that’s how I got started. In coming blogs we’ll dive into those lists and my thoughts on how/why I prioritized the way I did.
